Surely not. There was no way he could desire this woman, for she was everything he most wanted to avoid. To feel like this within moments of meeting her was crazy. But there was no escaping the way touching her made him feel. There was no avoiding the way his body was responding.
Her body was soft, yielding against him. Her hair was naturally curly, and her curls were escaping their braids. Her hair was really cute.
Really soft.
Nice.
And then…pow!
The thump between them was such a surprise it drove them apart. They stood at arm’s length, staring at each other in astonishment. Then staring down.
‘I’m s-so…’ she stammered. ‘I’m so s-sorry.’
‘I don’t think it’s you who needs to apologise for that one,’ he growled. The sensation of her baby had slammed the need for sense into his head and he took a step back. Literally as well as emotionally. What the hell had he been thinking?
Caring for a pregnant woman…No and no and no.
Her wide green eyes stared up at him, and then down at her still heaving bump.
‘He’s got a good kick,’ she ventured, cautiously.
‘He surely has.’ New emotions were surging in now, and his head was scrambling to reassemble his emotional armour. How long since he’d felt a baby’s kick? It made him feel…
No. Don’t even think about going there.
‘Maybe it’s to reassure us he’s okay,’ he managed, feeling lame, dredging up a smile.
‘Maybe,’ she said and wobbled a smile in return. And then: ‘That was unforgivable,’ she said. ‘Thinking you were leaving.’
‘I hadn’t told you otherwise. I’m sorry. But consider me kicked. By…’
‘Archibald.’
‘Really?’ He found himself smiling properly this time, caught by her fierce determination to apologise, and her equal determination to insert humour into the situation. This was one brave woman. The sensations he was feeling toward her were inappropriate but clinical approval was fine. ‘You’ve decided on his name already?’
‘He knocked my mug of tea over last week,’ she said darkly. ‘I had to run cold water over my tummy for ten minutes until I stopped stinging. Until then, she was going to be Chloe or he was going to be William, but that’s in the past. Archibald it is.’
‘Named for the baby’s father, then?’ he said, still striving to sound professional. He smiled again, but it was her turn for her smile to fade.
‘His father would be William, but Archibald takes precedence.’
He was still holding her, by both hands, but now she made to pull away, as if naming the baby’s father had brought her to her senses. Both of them had to come to their senses. ‘Look, I am sorry,’ she whispered.
‘And I’m sorry, too,’ he said. ‘So let’s stop apologising and get things moving. I need to take you to hospital.’
‘I’m not going to hospital, but I do need to get back to Gran’s. It’s not far. If I hadn’t hurt my leg, I could walk.’
Yes! Suddenly things seemed simple. This wasn’t his problem. He could take her to her family and explain the need for hospital assessment. She’d said Gran was ill, but where there was a gran surely there’d be other relatives. He could hand her over with instructions to take her to the nearest hospital, and his nightmare of a weekend would be over.
‘The calves won’t go anywhere,’ she said, thinking out loud. ‘With Bonnie’s help Angus can drive them home by foot from here.’
Hooray for Angus, he thought. And William and Gran. A whole family. Better and better.
But she was wilting, and he was wasting time.
‘Okay,’ he said, and ignoring protests he lifted her across to his car, blessing the fact that the Aston Martin had a rear seat. Once again, though, he was surprised at how little she weighed.
Were things okay? Was this a normal pregnancy?
This was Not His Problem, he reminded himself sharply. He needed to cope with the emergency stuff only. She’d have her own obstetrician. Her family could take her there.
Stay professional and stay clinically detached.
But as he lifted her into the car he smelled a faint citrusy perfume, and he was caught once again in a totally unprofessional moment.
Her luminous green eyes were framed by long, dark lashes, surely unusual in a redhead. Her freckles were amazingly cute. Her flame-coloured curls were still doing their best to break out of their braids, and he had an almost irrational desire to help them escape.
Whoa. What was it with him? He was being dumb and irrational and stupid.
This was his patient. Therefore he could stop thinking dumb thoughts about how she smelled and how she felt against him and how her hair would look unbraided.
So turn professional.
‘Let’s do formal introductions,’ he said, trying to sound like he was about to key it into her patient history. ‘Can you tell me your full name?’
‘Maggie Maria Croft. You?’
‘Maxwell Harvey Ashton.’
‘Dr Ashton?’
‘Max is fine, we’ll forget the Harvey and I’m hoping we don’t need the Doctor. But if necessary…’ He hesitated but it had to be said. ‘If your family can’t take you, I’ll drive you to the hospital at Gosland—or even to Sydney if you prefer.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, courteously but firmly. ‘But it won’t be necessary. If you can just take me back to the farm I can sort this mess out by myself.’
CHAPTER TWO
SO FIVE minutes later he turned into the farm gate—and found himself staring at a graveyard. A tractor graveyard.
The driveway from the road to the house was a long avenue of gumtrees, and underneath their canopies old tractors were lined up like sentinels. There were tractors from every era, looking like they dated from the Dark Ages.
‘Wow,’ he breathed, and involuntarily slowed to take a better look. Some of the tractors looked like they could be driven right now if he had the right crank and didn’t mind using it. Some were a wheel or two short of perfect. Some were simply skeletons, a piece of superstructure, like a body without limbs.
‘William likes tractors?’ he ventured.
‘Gran and Angus like tractors. Gran bought her first one when she was fifteen. I believe she swapped her party dress
